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So you want to be remembered
or why your family history is important

Every person on the planet is important. But you knew that already. As a species we live and prosper by the accumulated knowledge of our times and of those that have gone before.

We know what happened to earlier people for they wrote it down, or someone else did, on their behalf, or over their objections.

Writing a family history can be a pleasant experience full of hidden treasures and revealed astonishment as we discover a more human side to our grandparents.

A grandfather who seemed stern to his grandchildren in his closing days may have been the toast of the town for his charitable works and his comedic talents at charity events.

A doting grandmother may have been a risqué character when the world was more innocent. You can be sure that once you begin to research a family history your world will begin to change. What you write for others to read is up to you.

If history is written by the victors, a family history should be written with love and understanding. Few of us want to be remembered for our weaker moments.

And if those family members we write about have passed on, then we owe them the courtesy of circumspection.

So, ask yourself, as you assemble your research into publishable mounds, which would be the best way to write the account of your family?

Is it to be an informal account to be copied and distributed among family and friends only?

Do you see it as a full-scale account of your family’s place in the scheme of things and therefore to be published by a trade publisher and stocked in all good bookshops?

Or, is it some place in between where you decide to publish it under your own imprint with the help of publishing professionals?

A family history can be as simple as a family tree where the bare bones of who married whom and which offspring belongs to whom is pencilled in.

Or, it can be replete with anecdote and detail about family members’ achievements in the wider world. It can be as elaborate as you wish --- or have the time and resources to invest.

Your family’s history could conceivably go back to the dawn of time and their exit from the Garden of Eden, as it probably must; but you are unlikely to wish to write that far back.

Well, you may; but much of it would have to be conjecture and it would be most likely you would lose all but the most pedantic of reader, along the way.

Whatever you decide, be aware that the book will be read after you have passed on yourself and will be no longer around to correct any misunderstandings that may arise.

It should be as accurate as you can make it for in a very real way it will be your own history.

It is important to get it right: for those who went before and those that will follow afterwards.

It is you.

© Brendan Nolan 2009
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